Many law firms already understand the value of email newsletters. By staying in touch with prospective clients and existing clients, you keep your law firm's name fresh on their mind. In fact, email newsletters are a great way of getting new clients not because of the people already on your list, but because of their friends and colleagues.

Not everybody needs representation right now and that is what makes newsletters so effective. By staying in front of people that have used your services or requested information, you encourage them to pass on your information when they know someone that needs an attorney.

While they are very valuable, the newsletter is also rather time consuming. But the whole process can be automated if your law firm already has a blog.

First, you must have an account with an email list manager like Constant Contact or Mailchimp. We recommend Mailchimp for their simplicity and intuitive list management.

You can connect your website's contact forms with Mailchimp so that when someone fills out a form, they get an email to verify that they would like to receive updates from your firm. They verify by clicking a link and now they are on your list without you having to do anything. This is the polite way of getting subscribers, but you could also skip the verification process although your unsubscribe rate will probably be higher.

Second, you will need to set up a template in your email list manager. A clean header that looks like it is related to your website and some links in a side column are usually sufficient. The space in the middle is left blank because that is where the newsletter content will go.

Now it is time to automate the sending. Mailchimp has a feature called an RSS Campaign. Say for example that you post a couple of blog entries per month on your website's blog. You will set up an RSS campaign, submit the blog feed URL (usually something like example.com/blog/feed/ or /rss/). Then you will set up your schedule. Let's assume it is the 1st of every month. Select the template you created for the layout and then you are done.

On the 1st of every month, your new blog entries (it will not send duplicates) will be imported into your list and sent out in a professionally formatted newsletter.

With the right website technology, you can automate the whole process from getting subscribers to sending them a routine newsletter without ever having to do anything more than keep your blog up to date.